I had an interesting meeting with Steve Muddiman, global head of marketing at BasWare, yesterday. Muddiman joined the Finnish technology company just seven months ago and has been tasked with expanding the company into a global powerhouse.

No mean feat for a company for which more than half of its global sales still originate from its home market of Finland. So Muddiman certainly has his hands full.

But he was telling me about a particularly cool piece of technology which, if adopted and rolled out, could help BasWare realise its vision. It could also change the way we use and sign up to supplier networks - one of the unique selling points of competitors such as Ariba (where Muddiman used to work, before a stint at VMware) and IBX.

The technology that Muddiman was so excited about uses somewhere in the region of 30 communication protocols to allow buying organisations to connect to different supplier networks. So, rather than signing up to a particular network (whether a commercial one, such as Ariba's, or a industry-specific network, of which there are many) they will be able to access all of the networks that agree to open up to this wider uber-network.

The power of such a system is clear to see and, Muddiman says, 10 recent now mean that a total of 65 supplier networks have already agreed to play ball.

Whether the commercial supplier networks will be as keen to sign up remains to be seen...